Social Entrepreneurship: Messengers for Society

Between the 1. – 11. of November 2017 we were invited for a Youth Exchange in Valencia, Spain.

Participants for the youth exchange are young people (aged 18-30) from Spain, Serbia, Georgia, Italy, Ukraine and Armenia who are interested in social entrepreneurship, non-formal education and diversity. Participants will have a space and time where they will share their knowledge about social issues, will exchange ideas and experiences and will get new skills and tools while dealing with multicultural groups.

The Hosting organisation XERACION VALENCIA (xeracion.org) is a youth cultural non-profit association with offices in Valencia (Spain) with the main aim of empowering youth to develop themselves and their critical thinking in order to have active citizens who will improve our society. We follow and practice values of tolerance, human dignity, inter-culturalism, cooperation, social justice and integration. As well as practicing and promoting a sustainable development, healthy life styles and an active protection of the environment.

The main topick of this YE was to spread the idea of “Social Entrepreneurship”,

while living in countries of contrasts, encountering many social problems and issues on the way, noticing the lack of active engagement of young people in community life, there came the need to provide education about social as an intervention for solutions to social challenges. Hence “Social Entrepreneurship: Messengers for Society” is a project which intends to offer an insight into social entrepreneurship, as a value-based education for spreading and expanding ethical principles and aspiration for working or doing business while responsibly being engaged with communities.

The aim of the project is to try to tackle social problems, inform young people about social entrepreneurship field and motivate them to think about deepening their knowledge and desire to act as social messengers. The project aims to provide participants with relevant knowledge and skills to start understanding what social entrepreneurship is, to review and encounter different social issues, find approaches and ways for promoting them, to develop respect, empathy and tolerance towards their society and also to provoke change and improvement of behavior of participants for a larger capacity of communication between people from different cultures.

Objectives:

• To raise awareness about social entrepreneurship among young people

•To encourage entrepreneurial traits and behavior: leadership, personal/teamwork assessment

and management

• To experience creativity tools as problem solving skills

•To provide general view about social entrepreneurship status in different countries while giving them opportunities with practical approach

• To provoke young people to create social value

• To stimulate active engagement of young people in society

• To develop and foster communications and interpersonal skills

• To contribute to the promotion and development of non-formal learning

• To give information about Erasmus+ program and non formal learning